SM32 Harvest Trucks - building the bodies

Someone recently scanned the instruction sheet for the long-unavailable Saltford Models harvest trucks and posted them online. These were a 16mm/SM32 kit for a simple but rugged waggon designed in the main for helping with the fruit harvest in your garden, carrying plums etc. The inspiration for the kit was some rough peat wagons used at Ashcott, near Glastonbury, locally made with plank bodies and a wooden underframe. I never built any when the kits were available even though I built a few other Saltford 16mm kits at the time. Now however I'm going to put that right.

As designed the bodies would have been made from plasticard, however I've mine made mine from 'craft sticks' from The Works, which cost a pound a packet. These are 114mm long, so the first job was to cut 7mm from each end to cut away the rounded ends and give me a pile of straight planks 100mm long. This sets the body length, it should be 115mm according to the drawing but hey, 100mm is still good. Wood glue holds everything together.

Using lolly sticks is quite good fun, and also a chance to use my NWSL Chopper, a tool that I rarely use but when I do need it I'm glad that I've got it.

Chassis rails are cut from '9 x 9mm' pine strip, which is actually 8 x 8.5mm. The drawing shows these to be 10mm longer than the body, again I've done my own thing by making them 20mm longer. They are spaced so the outer faces are 24mm apart.

Ironwork would have been cast from whitemetal in the original kit. I've used .030" styrene cut into 3mm wide strips with .040" Evergreen rod for bolt head detail.

I'm not sure how to finish these. I've been playing with Citadel's 'Devlan Mud' wash, applied over several washes, which looks like it will give me the dirty peat stained look that I want;

Comments and suggestions welcome!

Wheels and bearings next.

Paul.